I woke up a Hawes in pain and in need of a medic. At Alston things got much stranger. I had a dream in which I had pain in both of my knees (this may or may not have been true) but in my dream the pain had been caused by a couple of people that had got into the checkpoint and posed as medics but who were in fact causing runners to exacerbate their pains by giving them incorrect advice (told you it was strange). What was worse though was that I didn’t properly wake up before getting up, wandering downstairs and asking a very confused volunteer if the medics really were medics as I thought there might be some phantom ones in the checkpoint…
Yes, that possibly is one of the weirdest, most embarrassing moments I’ve ever had on a race.
Moving swiftly on, I woke up properly, had something to eat and drink in preparation to go out for the next leg. I did another livestream from outside the checkpoint before I got ready to actually leave. This one was somewhat less coherent, I couldn’t work out which way the camera was pointing, burbled on about phantom medics and did an Arkwright (from Open All Hours) impersonation.
I’d handed over most of my outer layers to be hung in the drying room when I arrived so I needed all of those back (particularly the waterproof trousers as that was a kit check item at this CP) before I could go. Everything was returned apart from my hat. It wasn’t in the drying room. No, that was because I was still wearing it when I sat down. I asked if it could go in the drying room with everything else. It could, but someone pointed out I was sitting next to a radiator so it would dry better if placed on there. I completely forgot this and had anxious volunteers trying to find my hat in the drying room. Fortunately one of them eventually realised I was an idiot (they may have heard me asking about phantom medics) and looked elsewhere. I was reunited with my hat and headed out.
The Spine Race doesn’t have any ‘easy’ legs but, on paper at least, the fifth leg is one of the easier ones, it’s the second shortest and has the second least climb. However given that leg four is the shortest and has the least ascent (according to my GPS routes anyway) this is not a reliable indication of how difficult the leg may be. It is fair to say that leg five doesn’t have any epic climbs or big peaks to conquer. Apart from the stretch along Hadrian’s wall it is mostly across farmland (bog) and commons (bog).
It is definitely a mistake, for me at least, to ever think of any of the Spine Race as ‘easy’. I knew the Angel of Slaggyford wouldn’t be out with pizza as she had a race so I was unlikely to have any chance of food beyond that which I was carrying until Walltown at the earliest. The first miles were across fields, I fell over, I felt I had the wrong shoes on, I was heading into some boggy commons, I’d had enough.
After about seven and three quarter miles (according to my Strava – at the time I thought it was sooner) I climbed over a stile, sat on the stile and just stopped. I was low on energy, low on motivation, I couldn’t really see how I was going to get to Bellingham, was it time to call it a day?
No, I just needed a bit of a reset. First, eat lots of sugary stuff and pop a caffeine tablet I carry for these kind of emergencies. Right, I feel like I can move a gain, now I need something to motivate me. That’s where you all come in, the dot watchers, the TrailMailers, the FB post commenters, the WhatsAppers, everyone that wants me to get to Kirk Yeltholm. I opened my phone, I scrolled through my TrailMail, looked at the comments on my FB posts and read a few messages. The wind blew some grit into my eye, I definitely didn’t have a little cry. I’m not doing this on my own, I’ve got an army of people pushing me along so time to get up and get on with it.
There’s not much to say for a while. Hartleyburn Common South is boggy, dull but did offer one positive. Just before the Pennine Way crosses the A689 it does that most Pennine Way of things and leaves a fairly decent trail to hack off across a bog.
The point to this (if there is one) is that you then cross the A689 directly opposite the entry to the next bit of bog and avoid walking along the A689. However, I’d been over there at least four times previously and had never found anything remotely like a path to the stile. Winter 2026 broke that duck! Presumably enough people had pretended the path existed to actually have created one by the time I got there.
As I was crossing the next piece of bog I remembered I was heading towards Green Riggs and the home of Rasta Man Ralph – who I don’t think is a Rasta, and I’m not sure his name is Ralph either. Anyway in 2026 he can be whatever he likes. Ralph loves taking videos of Spiners, having a chat and feeding us various meats he cooks on his barbeque, This time was no exception and I was given sausages and chicken.
Hartleyburn Common North Side and Blenkinsopp Bog – Sorry, Common – beckoned. Well, less beckoned than threatened really. By now I was used to the bog and the occasional slip. I also knew that bogs at least would come to an end for a few miles along Hadrian’s Wall. The couple of miles from Blenkinsopp Common to Hadrian’s Wall are just a bit irritating to me, it isn’t very direct, you have to cross the A69, which is challenging, and then go through the edge of Haltwhistle golf course and down to the road on a path which is overgrown in Summer and a slippery delight in winter.
Anyway things got a lot better at Walltown Quarry car park, a lot better. There was a Safety Team there with hot beverages and a selection of sweet and savoury snacks. I think I ate quite a lot but what I mainly remember were cocktail sausages.
The were a few of us at the car park, some may have been together but I continued more or less on my own as they all seemed quicker than me. This didn’t bother me as I spend most of my time alone on most races. I find it hard to run with others as I find I’m either running when I don’t want to be or walking when I don’t want to be, I’m not anti-social (much) I just like to do my own thing.
As it was I did have some company along Hadrian’s Wall. Kingsley Phillips caught me up and we ran together for some miles. We were both slightly nervous about some of the downhill sections along the wall in particular. There were sections of irregular steps, the temperature had dropped below freezing and we were both concerned by the possibility of icy patches on the rocks. We were still together as we came to Steel Rigg. I was fairly certain there would be a Safety Team there as there usually was, it was the last place we could be easily checked on before we crossed Haughton Common and the edge of Wark Forest. On the Summer Challenger North the team had hot drinks for us, this time it was just kind words. However the lack of a hot drink was offset when someone appeared with a large light and a camera and started taking pictures of me. It transpired he was Harry of Mountain King and was photographing my poles for Mountain King’s social media account. I’ve looked for said picture but I can’t find it, so here is a picture of Steel Rigg, from earlier than I was there I think, from Lee Wild. I can’t find him on the results so he may have been on a Safety Team, I may have even spoken to him.
Anyway back to Harry. I mentioned that I was using my old set of poles due to a serious mishap with my nice new ones. He told me to send him an email and he’d arrange some replacement sections for me. This was great news and he was true to his word – I now have fully repaired poles completely free of charge. The reason I’ve always stuck with Mountain King poles is the great customer service – they are a UK based company and can supply every part you can break on their poles, and I’ve bent a few over the years.
After Steel Rigg it wasn’t far to Sycamore Gap and then a mile and a half or so to Rapishaw Gap, where the Pennine Way leaves Hadrian’s Wall. It was also somewhere after we left the wall that Kingsley left me. He was clearly quicker than me so I thanked him for his company and told him to go ahead.
The next five miles were not a great deal of fun from my perspective. I didn’t make any big navigational errors but I did make a lot of small ones and kept having to find the path again. Finally I reached the point where the Pennine Way crosses a small road. The was a safety team there to meet me, who assured me the path to Horneystead Farm was much easier to follow than the one I’d just been on. They may have been right but it still didn’t stop me wandering in small circles at one point. It was also getting quite slippery by now.
Kingsley was leaving Horneystead as I arrived. Helen – the owner and Spine Angel – wasn’t around (it was around three in the morning), there was just someone having a very good sleep on the bed in the barn. I helped myself to coffee, soup and cake, left my donation and set out for the last few miles to Bellingham.
I was welcomed to Shitlington Crags by a marshal who’s name I’ve now forgotten, it might have been Ian or it might not. Anyway he ran with me for a while until I could see the beacon he had positioned to mark the stile over to the road past the relay station. From there on I only made a couple more very minor navigational errors until I was approaching Checkpoint Five, Bellingham.
As you can probably tell, this hadn’t been my favourite leg of the race so far. However my spirits were considerably lifted when I saw that Mick Browne had come out to walk me into the checkpoint. I’m not sure where I first met Mick, probably on the Spine, but our paths have crossed a few times since and he is always incredibly supportive and another one of those that started as a volunteer and I now consider a friend. He got me sat down, took my torch and put it on charge and left me in the capable hands of Gwen. Gwen quickly established that the simplest way to interact with me was to treat me as if I was five years old. That worked very well, although I suspect she would have drawn the line at playing the aeroplane game when she brought me food.
So, not the hardest leg physically but mentally it nearly broke me. Too many opportunities to make silly small errors in navigation, too much bog and general slippiness, a physically easier section leaves too much time for introspection. Still I’d made it to Bellingham. One more leg and I’d be at Kirk Yeltholm…
The Only Way Is Pennine... 